HIST 265 - Europe in the Era of World War

The First and Second World Wars altered the political, social, economic, and cultural landscape of Europe in profound ways. This course explores those transformations from the perspective of humans who lived through the wars, but also through the eyes of subsequent generations of Europeans as they grappled with the ongoing reverberations of these two global conflicts. Over the course of the semester we will engage with a broad range of themes and questions. We will, for example, seek to understand the origins of totalitarianism in Europe and its relationship to imperialism. We will explore how the wars transfigured Europe’s place on the global stage. Finally, we will consider how both conflicts shifted understandings of gender, ignited anticolonial movements in Europe’s global empires, and laid the foundations for European integration. Class time will be devoted to short lectures, film screenings, in-depth discussion, and a range of hands-on activities-including some history detective work! Your writing for this class will take the form of three collaborative in-class History Lab projects and one in-class exam at the end of the semester. All students are welcome in this course, including first-year students and folks without previous history experience. For History majors, this course meets the post-1800 requirement and can count towards the following fields: “Colonization and Empire” or “Europe” or “Law and Social Justice.” Every other Fall. (4 Credits)